Multiple micro ecommerce sites in install of Umbraco 30+
Hi All,
I'm looking to develop a solution for a client who currently has approx 25 micro ecommerce sites under one domain (outsourced and current system is approx 7-8 years old!!) and they add about 7-10 new sites a year, which their clients login to and purchase their own company branded products, but they have to pay the outsourced company everytime to create a new site (which is expensive) and so now they want the flexibility to create them theirself when they need too and change the content etc.
I've demostrated the flexibility of Umbraco and they loved it and showed some of ecommerce projects which they also loved so we're virtually settled on technology, system etc, etc.
The main problem I see is I know that Umbraco can comfortably have about 7-8 sites running in one install, my question:
Is there any way of having all these sites within Umbraco?
I was thinking of having multple domains on the server eg.
mydomain1.com
mydomain2.com
mydomain3.com
each with an sepearate install of Umbraco of which each has approx 5-6 sub-domains eg
shop1.mydomain1.com
shop2.mydomain1.com
shop3.mydomain1.com
shop4.mydomain1.com
shop5.mydomain1.com
Is this anyway at all possible or is there a better solution to this?
The client has a dedicated server with Rackspace so a decent hosting package and server to boot.
If anyone has any ideas or other solutions or even better has done somthing like this before would be great to hear from you.
If I understand correctly, the only difference between this sites is the layout(?) and the products shown, therefore you could do with one install, with one catalog and filter the products that are available per (sub)domain.
So Umbraco (+ shop solution) would just look the domain, check which categories/products applies to that domain and renders the right template.
Do you think you could set it up as a package that takes some variables in with it. I.e you could then set it up the client could install a package to setup new sites this might give you some flexibility to structuring a new setup going in. Are you going to use an off the shelf ecommerce package?
You can do this in different ways and just how you want it - thats Umbraco :)
You could have all same looking webshops in same umbraco solution and have completely seperated node trees or you could have all under same root node but have different catalogs for the different shops.
If you have specific question about how it could be done with Tea Commerce you fire your questions or mail me at info {[at]} teacommerce.dk, and i will be happy to help you with this case.
I know we discussed some of this via e-mail, but I wanted to add my two cents regarding catalog structure for your sites and subdomains. If indeed Umbraco isn't happy with the number of sites you need you could handle the bindings in IIS only. Basically point all the domain to a single Umbraco site and based on which URL the user is coming from pick the proper template - this could probably be achieved by doing a combination of url rewriting and alttemplates.
As for the products a great way to differentiate the assortment is to do multiple catalogs with uCommerce or even multiple stores if you need many catalogs for micro sites. Each catalog gives you the opportunity to do a different catalog structure so you're not limited to do doing different skinning. If Umbraco is able to handle the number of domains you need you can basically do this out of the box (in fact, the multi store support was designed with this specific use case in mind).
Also with multiple catalogs in place you're free to price products differently - handled by a single configuration option on the catalog itself.
Hi Tom, Which way did you look at going ? I would have thought the biggest problem is based on how the ecommerce works from each package ? Did you find a solution?
At the moment, I've installed the SuperSimpleWebshop, TeaCommerce, uCommerce packages and trying different methods from those mentioned above, trying multiple catalogues and one catalog with products assinged to different domains.
As we talked about Tom let my know if you need any help with the umbraco setup - think it all can be done with structure we discussed. To you James here is the structure:
Multiple micro ecommerce sites in install of Umbraco 30+
Hi All,
I'm looking to develop a solution for a client who currently has approx 25 micro ecommerce sites under one domain (outsourced and current system is approx 7-8 years old!!) and they add about 7-10 new sites a year, which their clients login to and purchase their own company branded products, but they have to pay the outsourced company everytime to create a new site (which is expensive) and so now they want the flexibility to create them theirself when they need too and change the content etc.
I've demostrated the flexibility of Umbraco and they loved it and showed some of ecommerce projects which they also loved so we're virtually settled on technology, system etc, etc.
The main problem I see is I know that Umbraco can comfortably have about 7-8 sites running in one install, my question:
Is there any way of having all these sites within Umbraco?
I was thinking of having multple domains on the server eg.
each with an sepearate install of Umbraco of which each has approx 5-6 sub-domains eg
Is this anyway at all possible or is there a better solution to this?
The client has a dedicated server with Rackspace so a decent hosting package and server to boot.
If anyone has any ideas or other solutions or even better has done somthing like this before would be great to hear from you.
Thanks in advance
Tom
If I understand correctly, the only difference between this sites is the layout(?) and the products shown, therefore you could do with one install, with one catalog and filter the products that are available per (sub)domain.
So Umbraco (+ shop solution) would just look the domain, check which categories/products applies to that domain and renders the right template.
Do you think you could set it up as a package that takes some variables in with it. I.e you could then set it up the client could install a package to setup new sites this might give you some flexibility to structuring a new setup going in. Are you going to use an off the shelf ecommerce package?
Arnold,
I never you could do that, that changes things (for the better) :)
Jameskn,
I will be using either of the following SuperSimpleWebshop, Tea Commerce or Ucommerce all dependent on clients needs.
Thanks
Tom
You can do this in different ways and just how you want it - thats Umbraco :)
You could have all same looking webshops in same umbraco solution and have completely seperated node trees or you could have all under same root node but have different catalogs for the different shops.
If you have specific question about how it could be done with Tea Commerce you fire your questions or mail me at info {[at]} teacommerce.dk, and i will be happy to help you with this case.
Hi Tom,
I know we discussed some of this via e-mail, but I wanted to add my two cents regarding catalog structure for your sites and subdomains. If indeed Umbraco isn't happy with the number of sites you need you could handle the bindings in IIS only. Basically point all the domain to a single Umbraco site and based on which URL the user is coming from pick the proper template - this could probably be achieved by doing a combination of url rewriting and alttemplates.
As for the products a great way to differentiate the assortment is to do multiple catalogs with uCommerce or even multiple stores if you need many catalogs for micro sites. Each catalog gives you the opportunity to do a different catalog structure so you're not limited to do doing different skinning. If Umbraco is able to handle the number of domains you need you can basically do this out of the box (in fact, the multi store support was designed with this specific use case in mind).
Also with multiple catalogs in place you're free to price products differently - handled by a single configuration option on the catalog itself.
Hi Tom, Which way did you look at going ? I would have thought the biggest problem is based on how the ecommerce works from each package ? Did you find a solution?
Hi James,
At the moment, I've installed the SuperSimpleWebshop, TeaCommerce, uCommerce packages and trying different methods from those mentioned above, trying multiple catalogues and one catalog with products assinged to different domains.
I'll let you know what I've come up with
Kind Regards
Tom
As we talked about Tom let my know if you need any help with the umbraco setup - think it all can be done with structure we discussed. To you James here is the structure:
Webshop1
- Proucts
- Product category A
- Product category B
- Product 1
- Product 2
- Product category C
Webshop2
- Proucts
- Product category A
- Product 1
- Product category B
- Product 2
- Product category C
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